Huawei unveils Mate 8 smartphone

Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 8 smartphone on Tuesday morning at CES 2016 to much fanfare.

The conference room at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for the Shenzhen-based company's press conference was filled with analysts, media and hundreds of excited "Hua fans".

The Mate 8, presented by Kevin Ho, president of the Huawei Consumer Business Group Handset Business, features a stylish design with a 6-inch screen, an upgraded camera, longer battery life and other new features that improve on the Mate 7, one of the smartphones that has helped the company grow rapidly around the globe.

Over the last five years, shipments of Huawei's smartphones have increased from 3 million in 2010 to 100 million devices worldwide in 2015.

According to Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, the company saw its smartphone shipments grow 44 percent in 2015. With 9.7 percent of the smartphone market, it's now third in the world behind Samsung and Apple.

Yu said Huawei hopes to surpass Apple in the next two years.

"We positioned Huawei as a long-distance runner. With the support from our global research centers and product centers, we have capacity to focus on technical innovation and world-leading product designs," Ho said.

Sixteen R&D centers have been set up in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, India and China. Huawei Consumer BG is one of Huawei's three business units and covers smartphones, mobile broadband devices, home devices and cloud services.

Ho said this year's performance represented an important achievement, as Huawei continues to grow and launch several global flagship devices each year focused on the premium market. Its objective is to integrate the best in creativity, design, fashion, photography and performance.

The Huawei Mate 8 will first be available in 30 countries, including Spain, Germany, France, United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Australia.

In Europe, prices start at 599 ($644) for the 32GB model with 3GB of RAM. For 699, there is a model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

Huawei will be offering the phone in a mocha brown, champagne gold, black and silver. The Mate 8 is not being launched in the US.

Huawei also unveiled two Swarovski crystal-bejeweled smartwatches specifically designed for women, Huawei Elegant and Huawei Jewel; a tablet, the Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0; and the Nexus 6P, a critically acclaimed phone made in conjunction with Google.

Huawei also announced that the gold-colored Nexus 6P is available in 32GB and 64GB models and at BestBuy.com, select Best Buy stores and the Google Store.

Huawei has 34,000 retail stores globally - more than 9,000 in China; 6,000 in Western Europe; and 1,500 in Latin America. It's ranked 88th on Interbrand's Best Global Brands list and 70th on BrandZ's Most Valuable Brands list.

lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com